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CHAPTER THREE

A nne didn’t know her way around this heap, though it wasn’t terribly large; she simply had a regrettably poor sense of direction.

Instead of taking her back to the refectory where there was food and, at the least, elderberry wine with which she could try to drown out thoughts of the grim future that awaited her, her chosen exit led into the church.

The long nave lay cool and quiet, soaring to the timbered ceiling.

The tall windows, newly repaired, let in the kind of soft light that made the world seem a deceptively kind and lovely place.

The saints smiled from behind the lead cames holding together panes of stained glass.

Knots of flowers decorated each pew, garlands draped between like loving arms, and petals drifted along the stone floor, releasing sweet scents as Anne trod upon them.

The air after the vanished festivities was melancholy, which suited her exactly.

How many human trials had these saints witnessed, uncaring?

And how many human joys had they presided over, caring less still.

Their function was merely to hear prayers and pass them along.

They were saints, with their eyes on the holy; they cared not at all for the tides that tossed the human heart.

“I suppose you’re proud of yourself,” Anne said to the one with the unfurled scroll naming her St. Gwladys. Gwen’s favorite.

St. Gwladys returned a self-satisfied smirk.

A bundle of myrtle, the largest on offer, sat in St. Gwladys’s window, marking her special status.

Anne grabbed a stalk. She always imagined she’d have myrtle at her wedding, heaps of it; every Welsh bride carried a sprig if she could.

The small white flowers opened like tiny hands, innocent, trusting, bristling with delicate stamens, each topped with a tiny yellow bulb.

Stupid myrtle. It didn’t look like a flower—it looked like a bug.

Anne tore apart a bloom and grimaced with satisfaction as the scent released into the air, spicy and sweet. She continued until every bloom on the bough had been mutilated, then crushed the dark oval leaves beneath her shoe, releasing the smell of rosemary. She reached for another sprig.

“Do you plan the same fate for all of them? You’ve a great task ahead of you if so.”

Anne whipped her head around at the intruding voice. A man’s voice, deep and full of humor, with a raspy timbre to it that suggested his amusements were few. She located the man who had produced the voice and threw him a glare of rebuke.

He stared back. Insolent churl.

“You might warn a body of your presence,” Anne snapped, feeling her heart, belatedly, knock out of its usual rhythm and start speeding as if she were a hare being chased. “Rather than creeping about like a spy.”

“I knocked on the front door. No one answered.”

His lips twitched. Still amused, despite her tart reply.

She felt the brazen need to attack and scrub that smirk off his face.

She couldn’t make the saint or Calvin Vaughn or the rest of the world stop smirking at her, but condescension from an arrogant stranger she didn’t know was the outside of enough.

“They’re all in the back, enjoying the feast. You missed the wedding by a mile,” she said with every bit of insolence she could muster.

“So it would seem.” His brow creased. He had straight, dark eyebrows that arrowed toward a small scar between them that made it look as if he were scowling. Perhaps he was scowling. His manner seemed one of forced calm, and so did his dress.

His neckcloth was wrapped in a stiff cuff and tied in a manner that held no pretense to fashion.

His coat was dark blue superfine but not cut in the clawhammer style, and the puffed shoulders and broad, deep lapels were at least two seasons out of fashion.

His waistcoat was of plain gold silk and his pantaloons didn’t cling, yet the shape of his clothing hinted at a frame that was strong and honed lean.

His military boots came up over his knees and dangled small tassels, nothing ostentatious, nor was the chain depending from his waistcoat at which he tugged to produce a watch.

Nothing about him was overblown. On the contrary, his effect was studiously understated, as if he restrained himself with great effort.

Anne, in her cross and contrary mood, found this utterly aggravating.

“Better I missed it. The wedding. As I was not invited.” He snapped the case closed and tucked the watch back into his fob pocket.

“Then why are you here?”

“Curiosity, you might say.”

“Do you know the groom?” Anne demanded.

He could be an acquaintance of Penrydd’s.

He had that military air about him, the straight back, an alertness to his posture that said he was ever on the watch.

Waiting for an enemy to attack from behind, much the way Anne was ever looking over her shoulder these days.

The recognition did not put her in charity with him.

Penrydd’s friends were, by and large, indigent second sons, inveterate gamblers and rakes, and not a one of them would make a decent husband and save her from Calvin Vaughn.

“Penrydd? I know him only by repute.” His remark, delivered in an impassive tone, told her he knew of the old Penrydd, not the man he’d become. “Are you the bride?”

Anne gave in to an unaccustomed bout of spleen and tore apart a second bough of myrtle. She threw it to the floor and stomped on it for good measure. “Hardly.”

“That’s a relief.”

An odd tone in his words made her lift her head and stare again. He looked almost as if the words had escaped against his will, yet she would swear he was a man who measured every word, thought through every action before he executed it. He had that deliberate, intensely focused air.

That intense focus was trained, for the moment, on her.

In the shadow of the church, she could not detect the shade of his eyes.

His sideburns were trimmed, as was his hair, exposed by the tall beaver hat tucked in his elbow.

But the skin along his straight jaw and around his firm slash of a mouth looked a shade paler than his cheeks, as if he’d recently shaved a full beard.

He had a pronounced groove above his upper lip and a dimple in his chin, as though a loving Creator had run a finger along his mouth before sending him out into the world.

Anne wanted to trace the exact path with her own finger.

Was she going daft?

“Why?”

She meant to make the words an accusation. They came out a whisper, as if her voice had caught on something.

“Why what?”

She cleared her throat and told herself to stop being the nanny goat Daron had always called her. “Why are you relieved I am not the bride?”

He gestured toward the bough of myrtle in her hands. “A bride destroying her wedding decorations would suggest she discovered the holy state is not as blessed as she’d been led to believe.”

Certainly not if her matrimony led to Calvin Vaughn. Anne shredded a flower of its silken petals and tossed the stamens into the air. They twirled like pixie dust before floating gently to the floor and, in some part, her gown.

“Matrimony is a hoax,” Anne declared.

He cocked one straight brow. The pronounced slant made him look devilish. “Not a sacrament?”

“It’s a lie. All our lives, we are told we are made for it.

” She tore one petal off a fresh, innocent flower.

“Meant for it.” Another petal followed the first. “Promised love and poetry, a home and babanod .” Petals three and four parted their stem at her savage yank.

The Welsh word slipped out; she didn’t speak Welsh.

She barely understood more than a dozen words.

“And then, once the shackle is on, we discover it’s a trick. A trap designed to convenience a man at a woman’s expense. Not the safety we were promised.”

She tore the fifth petal free, tossed the handful of stamens into the air, and threw the sprig to the floor. The scent of juniper filled her nose, peeling back the top of her head, releasing her inhibitions. This was a feral Anne she’d never unleashed. She was beginning to frighten herself.

No doubt she had frightened the stranger as well.

His mouth quirked up at one corner. Goodness, he had a riveting mouth.

The thin upper lip bore a marked Cupid’s bow, in a line with that groove, but his lower lip was almost too full.

His face was handsome, in an unremarkable way, but that mouth snagged the eye.

A blend of harsh discipline and sensuality, and a betraying hint of beauty.

Heavens, the myrtle was infecting her brain.

She had no business admiring men, beautiful or otherwise.

And on the whole, this one was rather shabby.

He might have that mouth, and that watchful air, but he also bore the look of a man who had been accustomed to rough living.

He dressed like a gentleman, but perhaps that was only to insert himself into a wedding and find food.

“So you wish not to be married?” He moved through the nave along the outside of the pews, as if he meant to protect the other windows and their burden of flowers.

“Emphatically not.” Prunella had said she might not marry again. She’d hinted she would wait for a man she liked.

Anne didn’t have that option. She reached for another myrtle branch to commit savagery and realized St. Gwladys’s windowsill was bare.

The saint smirked.

“I can see why you are not enjoying the festivities, given your feelings about the matrimonial state,” he remarked.

“The food’s nothing to speak of. And the wine?” She snorted. “Elderberry. What I wouldn’t give for a good Madeira right now.”

“A nice rich port,” he agreed. “And a haunch of mutton.”

Anne sneered. “They’ll have smeared it in seaweed.”

“Laver sauce? How I’ve missed that.”

She turned to face him, appalled. “You can’t want to eat seaweed.”